There's a ghost in my mouth
by Zelost-Mind
Summary: This is a girl!Sam/Dean winsister AU. Set Pre-series.


She's sweaty under her uniform, damp and clingy and she can smell her own smell; the grease and the fried onions and burnt toast. Her feet ache but she walks through the crisp morning anyway, sees if she can't blow some of the diner waitress stench away. Their room is all Dean when she lets herself in, though he's not in bed, there's a hot wave of boy and sleep; breath that's been trapped inside. The radio is playing quietly to itself, some guy crying that there ain't no sunshine when she's gone and Sam drops her bag, feels her mattress give too much under her ass when she sits down to heave her shoes off.

Her feet stink because she didn't wear socks and her toes wiggle on their own, free at last. Something clatters in the bathroom and she rolls her eyes, shakes her head, annoyed, when she spots Dean's crutches propped innocently against the television. Her brother is a dick but she's too tired from the night shift to fucking fight with him about his stupid, fat foot.

* * *

When she wakes up and six hours have disappeared - it's to the radio again, obnoxious competition, guess this scrambled intro and win a steak dinner! She might kill Dean for leaving it on; he knows there's not a lot she hates more than the incessant twittering and jabbering of local radio.

"Did you walk back here this morning?" Dean says. He's out of breath and it's not really a question, he's accusing her. She sits up, takes her time rubbing her eyes, stretching out. Let's her non-answer hang in the atmosphere for a second too long.

"It's not a big deal, I'm not gonna take a cab for a couple of miles, Dean."

He's doing pull ups, holding on with his fingertips to the bathroom doorway, ridiculous popeye-swollen foot weighing him down, ineffectual ace bandage on it like it's gonna help.

"How's the ankle?" she tries, untangling herself from the thin sheets. There's some food-thing on the table for her, with actual orange juice from an actual orange if she's lucky.

Dean joins her, mops his sweat with his dirty t-shirt as he limps over and sits down.

"You shouldn't be putting any weight on it," she nags, because she can't help it. It'll never heal and he's so fucking stubborn.

"You shouldn't walk around at four in the morning with nothin' on," Dean snaps.

Dean snaps a lot these days. Worse than when he was a teenager, she thinks. Sam watches him eat unhappily. Crease between his eyebrows even as he shovels eggs and bacon in to his mouth.

"You get any pepper?" she says, chicken shit. They've been arguing for two weeks straight. Dean tips his chin at her, the chair she's sitting on with his jacket draped over the back. She fishes in his pockets, rolls her eyes and pulls out napkins, sugar packets, scraps of paper, a plastic spoon and a beat up Hotwheels Classic. The left one is deeper than the right, silky lining inside like the whole thing's been replaced once already. His Zippos in there, sharp shapes of car keys, more trash, something gritty that gets caught under her fingernails.

"There's no pepper," she says after three minutes of searching and he swears, puts down his fork delicately, sarcastically, leans over and stabs his hand into the pocket, pulls out salt and pepper sachets right away like a trick and scatters them on the table, goes back to his eggs.

They've been arguing for two weeks and Dean's barely spoken the whole time.

Dean can name and describe every model of muscle car ever to come out of Detroit between 1955 and 1985. He can tell you what colours he'd spray them all if he won the Lotto. He can and has played varsity level baseball, basketball, football, lacrosse, hockey, darts, soccer, tennis and English rugby at various high-schools across the U.S. with more than a few offers to progress in to a 'bright future' but has declined all of them. He likes to dabble. His favourite game of all is pool because he enjoys the calculation of it and the smells that permeate the inside of a roadside bar remind him of home.

At least, that's what he likes everyone to think.

She almost says something, Dean, I love you, Dean, he'll be back soon, okay, Dean, you wanna heal up already so I don't have to work any more? Wanna see who can name the most state capitals? Wanna paint my toenails like when we were kids? Instead, she takes the car when she leaves for work later. The Impala is ass-heavy and hard to steer, especially to park. She has to adjust everything inside, but there's no keeping Dean happy so she might as well give him something new to bitch about.

* * *

The diner is a lawsuit waiting to happen; the other waitresses are either dumb as pig's shit or completely dead inside, the manager is a sleazy prick and they underpay by about two bucks an hour but it's the only thing easy, and close. She doesn't have any qualifications but she has sweet dimples when she smiles and she can keep her hands out of the register. The guy hired her on the spot when she went in to ask about the night shift, no ID required.

Her uniform is second hand, a size too small and the boss slaps her on the ass every time she has to squeeze past him at the end of the counter, gets himself a good handful. It's bad enough trying to work with her own constant homicidal urges but her brother might put the guy in the ground for real, if he knew, and she might not feel too bad about it either. She hates everything about the job.

It stays dark as she drives back, orange threat of sunlight in the sky that looks like it might not make it. Dean's in bed when she lets herself in, radio humming from his bedside. There's no way he's asleep and she thinks, fuck it, and puts a knee on his mattress, watches his eyes open up. It was a long fucking shift and sometimes. Sometimes she just needs it. There's no excuse for the kind of wanting she has and Dean is just. Dean is perfect in the worst ways.

"Gimmie a foot rub, " she says, and climbs over him, lets her tits touch down on him for just a second, a plea for peace. Full body hug. Dean squints at her name tag, flicks it. He sighs, possibly defeated, fingers in her hair already. He always was pretty easy.

"Take a shower first, Tallulah," he says, agreeable for the first time in forever, hands skimming up her waist, and she'd forgotten how good it looks on him. She smirks, sits back right on his dick to start popping her buttons.

Victory always feels good no matter how greasy she smells.

She gets on him for real, later, his chest sweaty, tensing under her palms. She likes to watch his head tip back, jaw solid, everything withheld while he just lets her take for a minute, ride it out on him. She likes to listen to the noise she can get out of him, radio silent, no sound except their fuck in the room. She drops forward a little when she's ready, tiring, grinds down on him and pushes her fingers against her clit, makes herself come on his cock and Dean's hands clamp her, keep her right there until she's done, too full until it's too much.

He rests on his elbows over her, pelvis bones slotting and sliding against her own, all sweaty boiled heat between them, and his cock punching up softly, right inside her. He whispers things you're never supposed to hear come out of your brother's mouth, makes her sob, tighten up around him uncontrollably.

Dean likes to take his time, when he has the time.

* * *

She looks at Dean's purple foot sticking out of the sheets, it's all odd bruising and crooked toes. He never lets anything heal properly.

"I think it's getting worse," she admits, and Dean tosses an arm up over his eyes, trying to ignore her. "Maybe you should... Maybe it's time for a hospital, Dean," she presses. It feels like walking the plank, like she's pissing all over their fragile truce. He breathes in and out, then reaches out like he's going to stroke her hair, pinches her neck at the last second because he's a dirty bastard like that.

"Ouch! You asshole! " she yells, and punches him in his ribs until he stops smirking.

"It's fine, it looks worse than it is. It'll be fine in a few days," Dean lies, sitting up. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits there. She watches his back, his shoulders where her pink fingernail etchings haven't faded yet. Dean has a good, strong back. Solid.

He gets more like their father everyday, in stature.

Maybe she'll take his word for it, see how he likes that.

Her neck throbs and she kicks him in the spine, quickly rolls away from his shock of laughter, before his inevitable revenge can get her.

* * *

Dad doesn't come back. She doesn't mention it as long as Dean doesn't. She works seven 'til four every night except Sunday and they pay for two more weeks in the motel and they carry on like there isn't some looming, dark elephant in the room. She knows Dean must try Dad's cell every day, because she does the same, before work and after.

They carry on like there's nothing wrong.

It goes straight to voicemail every time.

* * *

Dean's foot, miraculously, starts to look better. He starts taking painkillers and bitching about it, which in their twisted family means he knows it's healing. Bitching out his relief that he's not gonna lose his fucking foot.

"I _told you_ it was just a sprain," he gloats, when he gets out of bed one day and his foot is only brown-yellow with bruises, back to normal shape and size. She knows he didn't believe it for a second, not any more than she did, so she lets it go. Watches the pressure ooze out of him while he works out, watches him be careful with his foot, test it. He does all his warm up stretches meticulously.

* * *

It's so bright on Sunday that she gets a headache from squinting in to her book. The white glare from the pages is like staring at the sun, but. It's a good book.

Dean wanders past and drops a cold beer on her legs, comes back a minute later after some car door creaking and drops his sunglasses on her tits. She puts them on and takes a minute to bask in the other-worldly shade of the motel parking lot, listens to the spill and splash of water, the quiet crackle on the tape in all the right places that makes it hard to remember they're not in motion, on the road. Dean takes off his t-shirt and the maids cat-call at him good naturedly from the motel lobby, wolf whistles rain down from the hookers on the second floor and he soaks it up, shines up his car up like a goddamn diamond.

It's the best day they've had in a while, even if it turns out her shins and shoulders end up lobster-red with sunburn.

Dean puts his hands on her hips while she's brushing her teeth, panties and vest and ready for bed. His dick's snug against her ass for a second, checking in, while he inspects the perfect white lines her bra straps left behind on her skin. She spits, puts up with his fingers spidering all over her burned parts for a minute, scathing inspection, before she presses her ass back against him to feel him swell up. She rubs on purpose until he huffs a laugh and slips a possessive hand down to cup between her legs, to pull her back against him harder. His tender mouth touches down on her sore shoulder and she goes up on her tip toes, gets a more serious angle against his cock, better, firmer.

Dean is not a toy, she tells herself, rubbing up against him like a fucking cat.

Her brother never shot anything he didn't aim for, he's never fucked any one over he didn't mean to fuck over. She has a twisted view of Dean, a twisted, deep respect. A kind of worship, which is what makes it so mortifying that she rips him to shreds a lot of the time without meaning to -'cause she knows she just can; without thought, a tick. One sharp harsh word, an unfair pitiful look and he's a kicked dog, her own completely.

He hasn't shared a meal with her since he was thirteen and he hasn't given up the remote control without a scrap since she got big enough to throw a punch. He's never missed anything important or not important. He's never ever fucking missed a birthday. He put her first four stitches behind her ear when she cracked her head on a sundial that time, and he bought three different brands of tampons from a Walgreen's when she got her period in a Tallahassee mall and refused to leave the ladies bathrooms outside the juice bar. He swore on the memory of their mother, when she asked him to, that he wouldn't tell Dad.

He's exactly that and everything else he's ever been. Everything he needs to be, and there come the wide eyes, the impression he leaves, the worship she has. Full circle.

How Dean puts up with her, she'll never know.

"C'mere," he mutters redundantly, hot palm sliding back and forth over her panties, squeezing her there a little and she gets a slick feeling in her belly like a smile, 'cause she knows moods like this; like the planets are perfectly aligned or some shit, some weird syncing up. They're gonna be fucking for hours.

"Jesus," Dean mutters, nose running up the back of her neck, totally on board without her having to open her mouth to tell him. She pushes her hand over his, directs his fingers exactly where she needs them and lets him take her weight, lets him bring her off in under a minute against the cold sink edge.

She opens her eyes, lazy, and watches their languid reflection, can see her nipples through her tank, watches Dean's lips brushing her ear, reads the words rather than hears when he asks her to turn around.

The loud triple-thump on the motel door startles them both. Like a psychical burst bubble they spring apart and she feels a sweep of adrenaline, a shock in her chest when her heart starts to race. Dean adjusts his crotch, gives her a look, stay, don't make a peep, kid, and closes the bathroom door behind him - shuts her in like back up plan - when he goes to investigate. Sam checks Dean's watch on the counter (23:09 ) and presses her ear to the thin door, finds some jeans.

Dean calls for her a minute later. Pastor Jim looks like he's travelled a long way, clothes rumpled and dark smudges under his eyes. He nods a kind-faced greeting, asks her if she wants to sit down. He looks exactly like the bearer of bad news.

She feels her eyes darting between her brother and Jim, feels a swelling dread in her chest cavity.

"Dean?" she pleads, and Dean hesitates for a moment and then looks her dead in the eye. Dean is scared of nothing.

He shakes his head at her once. Final.

* * *

He can tell if a person is ex-military by the gait of their walk, the way they turn the wheel of a vehicle. He knows how to pick his battles so he doesn't lose. He knows every symbol on the periodic table and its chemical significance, whether it's useful or not, which household items he might find it in he needs to.

Dean buries his burdens.

Dean's love is shocking in its abundance. He misses their father dearly. Every molecule of him yearns for a home that was one man.

Their dad is gone.

* * *

Sam watches Dean drive and wonders if there's anything she doesn't know about her brother. Anything she couldn't guess correctly if she was asked. She puts a hand on his shoulder, runs it along when he doesn't flinch or shake her off, leaves it to settle for a moment behind his ear, smoothing over the outrageously soft hair there with her thumb. Dean rolls down his window, jerky. He doesn't shake her off.

They're never going to see their father again and Sam watches Dean, waiting for him to tell her what to do, waiting for him to take care of it like he always does.

Dean doesn't say a single word to anyone for almost three months and it takes as long for Sam to realise that maybe this even Dean can't fix. Maybe he'll never be the same.

They float across country, adrift.

* * *

In Darwin, Minnesota, Dean stops the car and tells her in no uncertain terms not to move from her seat. Sam walks down Main Street licking an ice-cream cone five minutes later, follows the crowds and finds herself in front of a familiar gazebo claiming to contain The World's Biggest Ball of Twine! and in small print, (built by one person). She smirks, heads to the gift shop after playing photographer for a few minutes with happy couples and Scandinavian backpackers (who seem completely perplexed) and buys a lime green t-shirt bragging Darwin's famous twine ball on the front. It's Dean's size.

Dean is staring straight ahead when she drops back in to the car, he doesn't acknowledge her, just reaches for the ignition and she has to stop him - hand over the gift.

"I got you somethin'," she points out uselessly. Dean stares at the t-shirt, blank faced.

"It's your size," she tries.

Dean decided at the age of nine (the first time they visited this town) that the Darwin twine ball was the lamest most rotten thing he had ever seen, and Sam, five years old and open to opinions, had agreed wholeheartedly. Sam knows, surer than she's ever been about anything, that Dean will hate this shirt with a passion and she needs him to do her a solid and bitch her the fuck out about spending $39.99 of his hard earned bucks on this piece of pedaled trash.

She's trying so fucking hard, and most days it's like he doesn't even know who she is anymore.

"Dean?" she says, watching him again, rapt. Inspecting for a clue that he's alive in there somewhere. She has been blatantly misbehaving for about eight hundred miles now and he's got nothing. He's giving her nothing.

"Okay!" she finally snaps, tossing the shirt in to the foot-well, "just fuck you, Dean."

He says nothing, shakes his head and starts the car and Sam seethes insides. She boils.

* * *

Dean gets drunk when they get in to Nebraska and stays drunk so they can't leave for a while. Uncle Bobby comes out onto his porch, hat off and shotgun down when he recognises it's their car kicking up dirt along his driveway. The dogs blaze out, circle Sam maniacally and when she feels Bobby's arms around her and smells his familiar smell she starts crying like she's never cried before in her life - like she's never gonna stop. She doesn't know where it all comes from, lava hot emotion spilling out of her.

"Come on inside, poptart," he whispers, gravel timbre, his beard catching at her hair. They leave Dean sitting in the car with the engine idling, the dogs scuffing the paintwork trying like crazy to get in his window, to greet him.

They don't see Dean for a couple of days and when he surfaces eventually he's got a shiner that's plum purple, so round and perfect it could be painted on. She overhears a conversation in the kitchen about his plans for their future that makes her break out in a cold sweat.

"You know you kids are welcome to stay here, I got room, Dean. As long as you need -"

"You know we're not staying here, Bobby -"

"So you plan is... what, exactly? Drag your sister all over the country while you get drunk on cheap whiskey... forever?"

"She can stay. I - we haven't talked about it. Sam can go to school - In the fall, she can go to school. I can't. I can't do this with her, too, Bobby."

"Dean, you better think long and hard about how you wanna tell her that you're planning on leaving her behind, 'cause take it from me, she is not gonna like it any which way you put it -"

"She doesn't have to like it - it's not a choice she has. It's what has to happen. I'm not gonna let her live the rest of her life out of roadside motels. She's smart enough to look after herself and I can't take care of her forever, she's almost eighteen -"

"Are you hearing yourself, son? You wanna split up? She don't get a choice? Lay off the sauce for a couple of days and then we can talk about this again, when you have a clear head -"

"I'm leaving in the morning, Bobby. I've had three months to think it through. I'm not a fucking trauma victim, okay. I can make my own decisions. Fuck you, alright?"

"Dean -"

"I'm leaving at sun up. You can tell Sam... You can tell her she needs to get on a bus to California in a week."

The screen door slaps punctuating Dean's exi and Bobby swears to himself, rattles around the kitchen. The scrape of a chair across the linoleum and then a deep, shaky sigh.

"Fucking _Winchester_," Bobby mourns.

* * *

Sam sits against the chest in the hallway with a Rottweiler in her lap for an hour, and then she goes to pack her stuff.

Dean can fuck himself if he thinks for one minute she wouldn't follow him to the ends of the Earth or anywhere else. He's so dumb she laughs out loud, a sob, as she shoves jeans and a Bible back in to her pack. She's thought about school, long and hard, but it won't make any difference. Dean is going to die hunting, just like their father, and no matter what degree she ends up with, how much of an education she has, nothing is going to change that.

She's got this life, and she's fucking sticking with it.

* * *

She lies on the hood of the car and feels the sun come up, let's it heat her up like she's a cold blooded creature until she hears him come out, heavy boots making the porch creak murderously.

"Sam..." he starts. Pauses. She twirls the car keys around one finger, sits up and puts her sneakers all over his precious grill, possessive as she can make herself, stares him right in the eye. She fucking dares him.

Sam learned everything she knows from Dean, and she is scared of nothing.

* * *

They last for a tense hour on the road and then Dean makes the mistake of opening his big mouth like she wants to hear anything he has to say.

"You should have stayed at Bobby's -" he starts, in a tone that flips a switch in her brain, and all hell breaks loose. She punches him in the face, no time to think about it or check it or pull it, just straight in there and her knuckles are burning from his jawbone and Dean's swearing furiously, car jumping and bouncing over dips and debris on the side of the road.

"What the _fuck_ are you _fucking doing_, Sa -" Dean yells and she's almost in his lap, clawing at his face, the car's still gliding when they tumble out and she punches him right in the throat, lucky shot but it means he's done for a minute and it gives her a chance to get on her feet, she watches him roll in the dirt - settle flat on his back. The car stalls itself a few feet away - goes dead and waits. Dean's loyal steed; it would never leave them to do this alone.

Dean coughs out dirt. "What the fuck is your problem?" he says, toneless, quiet. Like he's already forgiven her for assaulting him and running them off the road in broad daylight.

A million barbs fly through her mind, she wants to kick him, stomp all over him. It's a fleeting feeling, subsides in seconds like a tide disappearing. Dean's a lot of things but he's far from stupid, he knows why she did this.

Sam swings a knee over him, settles on his stomach and gets a deja vu so strong it takes her out of her head for a second. Sharp rocks are cutting in to the palms of her hands up next to his ears and she leans in close enough that she can whisper but not so close that she'll lose focus, she wants to be able to see his whole face.

"Get offa' me," he instructs perfunctorily. He doesn't move a muscle, spread eagle, and neither does she.

"Don't you ever leave me," she drills. "_How could you_?" she demands, watching his eyes squeeze shut against the question. "Dean. _How could you_?"

Dean can do anything. He can run a two-minute mile, he can hit a moving target at sixty yards, in the dark, with any weapon you give him. He can hold his breath for almost three minutes. He can take rusted, random, engine parts and make a sleek, working, purring machine. He knows every word to every song on Zeppelin IIII . Dean is hungry, open. He can fuck like he was made for it - he can make her feel things, physically, that she does not have words to describe. Dean is beautiful, he's powerful, resourceful. Dean is strong - strong minded, strong willed and he can bench two-fifty all day long without breaking a sweat.

"I don't know what we're gonna do, Sam," he says, eyes opening up helpless and wet.

Dean has never before felt homeless, out here. Dean needs a job to do. Dean can't fix this, and she realises that only now is he coming to terms with that.

"Okay," Sam says. She sits back, brushes the reddening graze near his chin with her thumb, apologetic. "So, we'll figure it out. We always do, don't we?"

Dean nods, eager. Sam can feel the shift of a lifelong dynamic, a dangerous premature slide. She can taste it in the air. She is going to be their compass from now on. What she says goes, for the rest of their lives, if she wants.

"I'm not going anywhere," she promises or warns.

* * *

There are patches of brown blood gluing Dean's shirt to his elbows when he takes his jacket off, hours later, a tear in the knee of his jeans. His last un-ruined pair, finally ruined; it's always only a matter of time.

They sit outside a diner at sundown, swapping milkshakes back and forth and Dean's squinting at their car, the only one in the 'lot.

"You're doing a full detail on her next time we stop," he decides, gesturing to his ripped jeans, the sandy-stains. Sam sits up straight in her chair, not sure if she's ready or willing to accept his idea of discipline now. Her barely existent sense of hierarchy is dipping and colliding, she doesn't know whether Dean's pushing or testing.

"You owe Uncle Bobby a serious apology next time we stop," she counters and knows immediately when he sags in his seat that it was the right way to respond.

They're even.


End file.
